Information Under Control

Continued

The team implemented a new business process that has revolutionized data management at the bank: Anyone who wants to add a company, delete something, change the hierarchy structures, or make any kind of change to the finance master data has to pass that transaction through a rigorous review that includes representatives from the regulatory, tax, general accounting, finance, and financial systems groups. "When someone says, 'I want to add this account,' the representatives look at the account to make sure that it's not redundant—that it's relevant, meaningful, and necessary. So now accounts don't just get added haphazardly," says Furtwengler. The group also ensures that new accounts and cost centers are managed in the correct hierarchies. This process has reduced additions by 75 percent.

After a request is submitted and approved, a primary master data management administrator puts it into the master data management system. System administrators can then choose how they want to use and incorporate that data. This transparent process also helps the company with Sarbanes-Oxley compliance.

The company started the new process with just a core set of the financial systems but eventually expanded it throughout the enterprise. "We began to see consistency across the key systems that generated the reports that went across the executives' desks. When we saw that this was working out well over time, it became the de facto standard for finance master data," says Furtwengler. The group now uses Hyperion Data Relationship Management to manage change across all financial master data hierarchies—including cost centers, entities, and companies, as well as their respective relationships, attributes, and properties.

A large number of systems pull data from the Hyperion Data Relationship Management tool, says Furtwengler. "They know that it is the definitive truth, the definitive definition for the finance master data for cost center structures and company structures."

Primary systems include Hyperion Enterprise; Hyperion Financial Management; multiple Hyperion Essbase applications including scorecard/stack ranking applications for commercial line of business (LOB), retail LOB, and mortgage LOB; Oracle Financial Services Applications; SAP Human Resources; indirect feeds to the IBM/DB2 data warehouse and Westport Software Group's Compensation Activity Tracking System [recently renamed Enterprise Incentive Software] via Oracle Financial Services Applications; and Hyperion Planning.

Hyperion Data Relationship Management allows Fifth Third to manage monthly data updates across multiple systems easily. "We work hard to ensure there is consistency across all systems, from our general ledger to Oracle business intelligence applications to Hyperion Planning and Hyperion Essbase dashboards that link to SAP and Oracle data," Furtwengler says. "All these systems use the standard hierarchy. From my past experience, Hyperion Data Relationship Management makes my life 10 times easier."